“It’s light,” said Bethany. “What’s the matter, are you too old for a four-mile hike at dawn?”
“Leaving aside the question of what I am too old for,” said Arthur, for whom the question of his age cut a little close to the bone, given his recent revelations about being in love with a twenty-six-year-old, “I very much like the idea of tromping out to the old monastic ruins.”
The sunrise had set the sky ablaze with color and though the morning air still bore a chill, Arthur found it bracing. To be not thinking of code breaking, not thinking of anything really, was a tremendous relief. They had walked on the riverside path nearly half the distance to the ruins when Bethany slipped on a patch of damp grass and grabbed Arthur’s arm for support. As soon as he felt her hand, his empty mind flooded. Love, he thought, was a most inconvenient emotion.
“I haven’t asked in some time,” said Arthur, “but how are you getting on with the digitizing? Getting near the end, I should imagine.”
“Are you that eager to see me go?”
Arthur could not respond that he both wanted her to leave as soon as possible and to stay forever. “Just curious. Just making conversation on a lovely morning.”
“As it happens, I am getting near the end,” said Bethany. “To be honest, I hate to think of leaving here. As much as I wanted to meet you, I never thought I’d end up on a real Grail quest. I thought I would spend my time here holed up in the library alone and maybe going off on weekends to see tourist sites by myself—but I’ve made so many friends. David and Oscar and Gwyn, and even dear Edward at the nursing home. I visit him twice a week, you know. I’m sure he’s sitting in his window now, looking out at this glorious morning.”
“And those are all your friends in Barchester?”
“Yes, Arthur,” said Bethany in a teasing voice. “You’re just someone that I enjoy working with and arguing with and solving mysteries with and drinking tea with and going to Evensong with—but that hardly makes us friends.”
They walked on in silence for a few minutes, Bethany with her hand still slipped through Arthur’s arm, until they rounded a bend and saw the ruins laid out before them in a closely mown field.
“There’s some talk of putting up a fence and charging admission,” said Arthur, “but we don’t really have enough visitors here to make it worth the trouble.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Bethany. “Glastonbury was so swarmed with tourists that it was hard to feel any connection to its legends. But this, in the morning light, so peaceful and abandoned—this feels like the ruins of Camelot.”
Before them stood a collection of gray stone walls, some crumbled to no more than a foot above the ground, others tall enough to cast long shadows in the morning sun. In the center of the complex, they could clearly discern the remains of the monastic church. The south side and the chancel had completely collapsed, but parts of the nave walls remained high enough that their Norman barrel-arched window openings were still intact. The remains of the west wall stood perhaps twenty feet high, and at one end a circular stone staircase disappeared into the thick masonry.
“Shall we go up?” said Arthur.
“Is it safe?”
“The wall has been here for almost a thousand years. It will collapse someday, but probably not today.”
“That’s reassuring,” said Bethany. “You go first.”
For the most part, the stairs were illuminated by sunlight from either above or below, though for a few steps halfway up they felt their way in darkness. After a short climb, they emerged into bright sunlight on the top of what was left of the west wall. A small iron railing kept them safe from tumbling over the edge and confined them to a small space at the north side of the wall. From this vantage point they could see the entire complex mapped out on the ground below them—the cruciform shape of the church, the adjacent square of the cloister, and the outlines of dormitories and kitchens.
“Somewhere down there, five hundred years ago, a monk wrote our coded manuscript,” said Arthur.
“Is that really what you want to talk about?”
Arthur felt his pulse quicken. “Isn’t that why you wanted to come here? To see where it all started?”
“I know the British are good at avoiding unpleasant subjects,” said Bethany. “What I don’t understand is why you think this subject is unpleasant.”
“What subject is that?”
“Oh God, Arthur—the subject of us. I don’t see why you should be breaking out in a sweat and . . . and trembling. It’s just me. You should know by now you can tell me anything.”
“And what is it you want me to tell you?” said Arthur. He knew that escape was hopeless, that he would have to face the crux of this conversation within a sentence or two, but his instincts still told him to play dumb and maybe it would all just go away. And then he thought, Why should he want it to go away? Why should he want her to go away? He was trembling with fear, yes, but he was trembling with excitement, too. He was alone on a parapet with the woman he loved, her face aglow, the flecks of gold in her blue eyes like . . . like . . . God, for an English lecturer he was rubbish at metaphors. But why not? Why not tell her that he loved her? This, of course, was the voice of impulsive Arthur, the Arthur driven by emotion and . . . and foolishness. This was Bertie Wooster talking. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for Jeeves to chime in. Why not? Because she is far too young for you to consider; she has seen far too little of the world to be grounded with Arthur Prescott; she stands in opposition to the very principles to which you have dedicated your life (this was exaggerating the point a bit, Bertie thought); she is argumentative and rude; she is a firm believer in things (God, for instance) in which you are a firm unbeliever. And then there is that ever so annoying wisp of hair, which even now is dancing around in front of her face in the breeze. There are, in short, irreconcilable differences. The match is hopeless, sir, said Jeeves, and thus to make a confession of love would only inflict further unnecessary injury upon your own heart and, in all probability, embarrassment upon Miss Davis.
“Earth to Arthur,” said Bethany, laying a hand on his arm and shaking him out of his reverie. “Charmed as I am by your tendency to zone out, I don’t really want to stand up here all morning. So why don’t you just go ahead and say it.”
“Say what?” said Arthur. Said Jeeves.
“Say how you really feel about me.”
“What do you mean . . . I mean, why would I—”
“Arthur, you may think that your British stiff upper lip keeps you from showing any emotions, but you’re actually pretty easy to read.”
“I’m not sure that I—”